Owning a car wash business

I dated a girl whose dad owned one of those self serve coin-op ones. Biggest pro is it is a straight cash business. This was 20+ years ago and I notice they all take credit cards now though so that no longer applies. Biggest con was the constant damage to the equipment, both intentionally by people and just normal wear and tear.

Your sig pic is ridiculous

Are you taking about self wash or full service?

There's one for sale in Lafayette

The new ones will cost about $1 million all in....land, wash, construction, etc.

If you manage it properly, they are cash cows.

No it's one that's been around forever

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If you manage it properly, they are cash cows.

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This is what I like about it... that, and the potential for minimizing labor. Something that will always be around as well, unless you think ridesharing places use their own facilities.

I know a guy who had one of the old pay and spray car washes back in the 90s. He would tell you all day what a PITA it was to own, keep repaired, etc. He regretted the hell out of getting into it.

That said, they are building one of the drive thru models on every corner in town these days, so they must have figured out how to make those work. The biggest downside to the new ones is they have employees who have to be hired, managed, fired, etc.

Personally, I like the ones where you hand over the car and let them run it through the wash, then hand dry it and clean the interior glass, dash, etc. But owning one of those, with 20 workers, has to be a full time commitment unless you have a great manager you trust,

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Personally, I like the ones where you hand over the car and let them run it through the wash, then hand dry it and clean the interior glass, dash, etc. But owning one of those, with 20 workers, has to be a full time commitment unless you have a great manager you trust,

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I can only imagine how much 2 weeks of rain would suck if you owned one of these places. Just sitting there burning money.

I used to do a lot of legal work (maybe 25-30% of my time right out of law school was billed to them) for some guys who owned several car washes around Memphis and the surrounding areas in North MS and Arkansas. They are drive through car washes and they have free vacuum cleaners for after the wash. These guys make a ton of money, in fact seeing how much money they made is one of the things that got me out of law firm life as soon as I realized how much money can be made outside of the corporate world

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well cars need to be washed after rains....

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then it comes to how long people are willing to wait in line. I've tried to go to Blue harbor in Mandeville before on a pretty day, saw the line and went home and washed it myself lol.